Ghosts
by Thought
Summary: Because, in my perfect world, your stalker hasn't taken an interest in me and you're not being mentally destroyed by a bunch of dead people.
1. Chapter 1

Ghosts

By: Thought

Disclaimer: Yes, I totally own Witchblade. Really. I do. Why are you laughing at me: -D

A/N: This is my first Witchblade fic, unless you count the ficlet for Sara and Gabe in 'Bleed Like Me'. I'm not quite sure of where all events place in the timeline, so if I get a few things wrong please don't shoot me! I will try and get chapters out at a reasonable rate, though I can't promise anything. It's been a long time since I've done any chapterfic work, and a long time since I've ventured out of the Andromeda fandom.

XXX

Chapter One

Gabriel knocked at Sara's door early Wednesday morning, all forced cheer and thinly veiled panic. It had been a long night, and his only excuse for not being passed out on his couch at home was the miracle that the common folk referred to as coffee. Having consumed copious amounts of the stuff throughout the night, he had managed to make his way through three books in Latin, two encounters with Ian Nottingham and one very intense and well deserved hangover that had lasted all throughout Tuesday and only petered off at around one AM Wednesday.

"You're stalker's threatening me," he told her the minute she opened the door.

"Poor baby."

He implemented one of his paste and cardboard smiles and pushed past her into the apartment. She closed the door and turned an irritated glare on him where he was standing, gripping the edge of a chair.

"Gabriel, I have had exactly zero cups of coffee this morning, was woken up by Jake on my answering machine informing me that he's taking his vacation time now and headed back to California leaving me with his share of the work for two weeks, got a call from Irons making more threats against my life if I don't let him have the Witchblade and ergo me, and now you barge into my apartment looking like death warmed over on Meth. This had better be damned good."

It took him a minute to fully process the rapid stream of words, and when he did, it took another moment to craft an appropriate response. He finally decided on "Huh?"

Her glare became a little less 'you're one of my closest friends so you might just get away with a few pranks' and became a little more 'I'm going to rip your fucking spine out if you don't give me a really good reason not to'.

"I found something out about the blade. And your stalker visited me twice. And that very large and prominent bruise on my face that you have so kindly not bothered to ask about is courtesy of him. So I'm sorry if I've made your morning a little bit worse, but I was up all night dealing with your problems, so…yeah!" He trailed off, dropping into the chair with his head in his hands.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and returned. "Gabe."

He didn't move.

"What did you find out?"

His gaze slowly lifted to meet hers. "Okay, so, the blade gives you visions. We knew that, right?" He took her utter lack of a response as encouragement to continue. "What we didn't know, or at least I didn't know, is that it can also give you the ability to make contact with beings that are outside our physical plain of existence."

She blinked, and sipped her coffee. "So…"

He ran his hands through his hair, making it stick up at odd angles. "You could theoretically, um, talk to ghosts," he finished, his hands leaving his hair to gesture helplessly at nothing in particular.

Sara blinked. Nodded. "Ghosts, eh?"

He nodded, his mind rushing to make her understand the principles behind the discovery. He didn't get a chance, however, as she smiled her own version of the paste and cardboard smile and pointedly opened the door.

"That's interesting, Gabe," she said. "I'll call you about that later, Kay? I've gotta get ready for work."

He stared uncomprehendingly at the door. "But…"

She gave him a pointed look. "Sorry, Gabe. I really need to be finishing getting ready. I'm gonna be late as it is. Like I said. I'll be in touch. Maybe I'll even drop by over my lunch break, okay?"

He got up, still jittery from the caffeine. "Yeah. Whatever, Sara," he muttered, and exited without another word.

Nottingham was outside of her apartment complex. Gabriel was not at all surprised by this fact. "Now what?"

The taller man fell in step beside him. "You are a very slow learner. Did I not warn you against speaking to Sara about the Witchblade multiple times?"

"What can I say," Gabriel shrugged, quickening his pace. "I hear things I don't wanna hear and it goes in one ear and out the other. Drove my parents nuts when I was younger."

"I'm not quite sure you fully grasp the importance of my warnings."

"Oh, so that's what they were? Huh. Sounded a little more like threats to me." Gabriel rubbed his bruised cheek. "Felt a hell of a lot more like threats, too."

"This is the last time I will tell you this, Mr. Bowman. Stay away from Sara Pezzini—"

"Or you'll kill me." Gabriel completed the sentence for him. "Yeah, I kinda got that part. Tell me that when I'm coherent and sane, and I might consider giving a fuck. Right now? No. Just…no."

"You are not taking this seriously."

"Yes, I am. I just don't care right now," Gabriel explained. "My brain is about the equivalent to a bowl of cold porridge at the moment. I just got brushed off by Sara after spending a day and night finding stuff out for her, and giving up my sleep and work and possible romantic interest to do so. I want to go over there and pass out on that bench, but I can't because I've had enough caffeine to keep an elephant doing the tango for the next year. I am generally not in a good mood and my head has become the residence of about fifty drummers with anger management issues. And that, Mr. Nottingham, is why I don't care about you and your creepy obsession with Sara, right now."

"You love her."

Gabriel didn't even break his stride. "Um, I'm not the one who sits outside her apartment on the fire escape and watches her. You're the one with the sick infatuation, not me."

"I do only as my father asks of me."

Gabriel smirked. "So Kenny's the one with the sick infatuation. Well, that just puts the icing on the perverted stalker club cake, doesn't it?"

"He wants the Witchblade," Ian explained.

"No shit, Sherlock. I knew that one already," Gabriel glared at the pavement. "But seriously. The guy's what, fifty? And not even a trophy wife? He's got to be at least a bit interested in the wielder, too. I mean, look at her. She's beautiful, smart, capable…"

"And there you have proven my original point," Nottingham stated blandly.

Gabriel blinked. "Which was?"

"You love her."

"Oh."

"And I want you to stay away from her."

Gabriel sighed. "Because you love her more, is that it? We back in Jr. High, Nottingham? Sara's a big girl. She can decide for herself who she does and doesn't want to see."

"And this morning it appears to be neither of us," Nottingham observed.

Gabriel ignored him. When he next looked up, the other man had vanished into the shadows.

"Freak," Gabriel muttered under his breath.

XXX

As soon as she had ushered Gabriel out of her apartment Sara locked the door and looked around for Danny. He was there, standing in the same space that Gabriel had been occupying moments before.

"I'm assuming you heard all that?" she asked the ghost.

"Yep. And I also heard and saw your very not subtle dismissal of him. That wasn't very nice."

She stuck out her tongue at him. "What was I supposed to do? Sit through a bunch of explanations that I'd only half understand, then say 'Hey, Gabe, guess what? I already knew all that because I talk to my dead partner all the time!'?"

He shrugged. "Maybe."

She blinked rapidly. "Maybe!"

"If that's what you thought you should do," he said calmly. "Was the Witchblade telling you anything when he visited?"

"No, no it wasn't. A lot of help it's been lately, anyway." Sara gave the offending bracelet a look of malice.

"You got the blade for a reason. It will reveal what you need to know in due course," Danny told her. She sent an icy glare his way. "Ooo, if looks could kill," he grinned.

"…Then you'd be absolutely fine," Sara tossed over her shoulder as she entered her bedroom.

Danny followed her. "Well, that may be true, but dead or alive you're still scary as hell when you're mad."

"Never stopped you from laughing at me before when I lost my temper,' she snapped, tossing a pillow at him. The pillow went right through him, and he grinned.

"Hey! I only laughed when it was funny! Like when you blew up at that witness on the Dowel case for constantly pronouncing your last name wrong."

Sara pouted. "I corrected the guy fifty times! What kind of idiot doesn't get something like that after the first five or six times he's told!"

"Some people just have a bit of trouble remembering things," he responded.

Sara tugged a brush through her hair. "Some people also like pissing me off," she retorted.

"Not untrue," he agreed cheerfully.

"And then I have the right to go Xena on their ass," she continued.

"Absolutely."

"You're on that list, Danny."

He grinned. "I'm also intangible."

She didn't grace his remark with a reply.

"So. Looks like your personal stalker has found another victim," Danny observed after a few minutes of silence.

Sara sighed. "Yes. Apparently."

"Maybe it'll take his attention off of you for a while."

"So he'll be busy stalking Gabriel."

"Yes. But he wants to have sex with you," Danny smirked at her in the mirror.

"But not Gabe…damnit, Danny!"

"Well, you made the suggestion."

"I didn't! I just said that—"

"He'd be busy stalking Gabriel. Exactly. Which implies some sort of deeply hidden sexual desire."

"Or not so deeply hidden if he's stalking him," Sara snickered.

"Though he did hit him last night," Danny remembered. "Did you see that bruise?"

"It's Ian's way of showing affection. He hurts his love interests."

"Don't tell me it turns him on?"

"S and M, Danny. And besides, if he gets off on the whole sadist thing, and he protects me from harm, that means that he has no sexual desire for me, hidden or not! And that works just fine with me."

"You're going to make my brain implode, Sara."

"You're a ghost. What do you care? I have to deal with the mental images all throughout the day at work!"

"You brought this entirely upon yourself, Pez."

"Oh, did I now?" She grabbed her leather jacket, holster and phone from the bed where they had been waiting for her. "Well, I'm going to work now. You have fun doing…whatever ghosts do in their spare time."

"You should talk to Gabriel," Danny told her as she opened the door.

"Thank you, oh wise Asian Master," she snapped. "I kinda figured that's what you wanted me to do."

"I always knew you were smart."

She slammed the door in his face. He promptly popped up in front of it. "Joys of not having a physical body. The power of a slammed door somehow looses its impact when one can walk right through."

"Well, the power of sanity kind of looses its impact if one is seen walking around talking to know one, so shut up and go away."

"I'm hurt. I really am. You don't want to spend more time in my cheerful and uplifting company! You've deeply scarred my self-esteem forever and ever. I don't know if I'll ever recover."

"I'm sure you'll get over it. Now shoo," she said, glancing around to assure herself that there was no one close enough to overhear her conversation with the seemingly empty air.

"Promise that you'll go see Gabriel at lunch and talk to him."

"What if I'm busy?"

"Then go after work."

"What if I've got a bunch of paperwork to take home with me and finish?"

"Ignore it for a little while."

"I hate you, you know that?"

He grinned. "It's one of the perks of being the best friend."

"Fine, fine. I promise I'll go see and talk to Gabriel at some point today. Happy?"

"Yes. You've made my day," he said dryly, and vanished.

Sighing, Sara headed down the stairs, already quite aware that she was going to be horrifically late to work, and that Dante would have her ass for it.


	2. part ii

Part Two

Sara's day was slow in the sense that she never left her desk throughout the entire eight hour period unless it was for coffee and/or food. With Jake gone, she was left with the mountains of paperwork which they had been putting off constantly. Her hands were cramped, her head pounding and her vision was becoming blurry by the time 17:00 rolled around. Releasing a breath of relief, she stretched her hands above her head, wincing at the popping of her back.

There was a knocking on the door, and Vicky Poe popped her head in. "Hey, Pez."

Sara rose to her feet, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "Hey, Vick. What's up?"

The medical examiner gave a mischievous little half smile, and Sara's hackles rose. "Well, from the look of things you've had a long, hard day at the office, with no breaks, no excitement, no—"

"Oh God," muttered Sara, pulling on her jacket and picking up the helmet and keys for her bike.

"And what better way to finish off a stressful day than a night of dancing, alcohol and men?" Vicky grinned.

Sara closed her eyes and tried to ignore the little voice in the back of her head that was telling her to just kill her friend and end the torment. "I don't know, Vick, I've got a lot of work to still catch up on…" She made a show of stuffing as many papers as she could find into her briefcase.

"Don't lie to me, Pez, it won't work."

"I've got to do laundry!" Sara exclaimed.

"Again? Wasn't that last night's job?"

Sara cursed silently. She knew her friend meant well, but she honestly had no interest in a new romantic intanglement at the moment, and was not in the mood for any sort of bar or club or anything else that the over-enthusiastic woman had in mind. Danny popped up behind Vicky. Sara tried not to jump.

"You promised," he reminded her, lifting one eyebrow challengingly.

She frowned, trying to remember what she had promised her best friend. It came to her almost immediately. "Gabriel!" She snapped her fingers.

"What?"

"I promised my friend Gabriel I'd go see him," she told her.

Vicky's eyes lit up. "Really now? And why haven't I heard of this friend before now?"

Sara glared. "Shut up. Not that kind of friend."

"Uh huh?" Vicky arched an eyebrow disbelievingly.

"Uh huh." Sara snapped her briefcase shut with a sharp click. "I'm leaving now."

"Have fun with Gabriel," Vicky sang.

"Bye, Vicky," Sara said pointedly, and brushed past her to the door. "Shoo," Sara told Vicky. The other woman trailed Sara to the doors of the precinct.

Sara exited, but Vicky called her back. "Oh, Pez?"

"What!" Sara clenched her teeth, restraining her violent urges.

"I want details."

Sara let the door slam behind her, trying to ignore Vicky's hysterical giggles which trailed after her retreating form.

XXX

She arrived at Gabriel's shop after much deliberating, and a great deal of prodding from Danny. "This is going to be fun," she muttered sarcastically, standing outside the door of Gabriel's shop.

"Could it be?" her dead partner mocked. "The great Sara Pezzini afraid of a guy?"

"I'm not afraid of him," she said irritably. Danny shrugged innocently.

"I do hope this habit of talking to yourself doesn't manifest itself in front of others, Sara." She spun around, coming face to face with Ian Nottingham.

"Damnit, Nottingham! Stop sneaking up on me!"

He smiled into his beard. "I apologize."

"What are you doing here?"

"I was walking past and saw you. Certainly one is allowed to say hello to a friend on the streets of New York?"

"We're not friends," she retorted. "And somehow I doubt that you were just walking along and happened to see me and thought 'Oh, I think I'm going to go stalk Sara for a while!'. So what are you actually doing here?"

"I came to see your little friend."

Her eyes widened. "Fuck. Gabriel! What did you do to him? If you've hurt him, I swear to God I'll—"

He held up a hand. "We had a very civilized conversation. No blood was shed."

She backed into the door and pulled it open, not taking her eyes off of the man in front of her. "Gabe?" she called into the interior of the shop.

"Hey, Sara," He sounded shaken up. She glared at Nottingham and stepped backwards inside, closing the door in his face.

Gabriel was leaning against the counter, his face a few shades paler than was healthy. It was only then that she remembered his earlier comment about Nottingham having "spoken" to him before.

"Sorry," she blurted.

He blinked and looked at her. "For what?"

"She is taking it upon herself to apologize for events which were entirely out of her control," Nottingham said from too close behind Sara. She took a few steps forward, trying not to crowd Gabriel. Behind her, Nottingham followed her example, moving forward towards her. She glanced from one to the other.

"Didn't you just leave?" Gabriel demanded of Nottingham over Sara's head.

"Sara is here now."

"Huh. And here I thought it was the Easter Bunny."

Sara prepared to defend her young friend against Nottingham's impending wrath; however the other man merely smirked. "I do not think yellow is her colour."

"Sara," Gabriel whined. "Make your boyfriend go away. He's scaring me."

She stared at him. "Uh…"

"If I leave, so does she," Nottingham told Gabriel calmly.

"Excuse me!" Sara turned on him. "I am not going anywhere with you."

Gabriel took that opportunity to move around to the other side of the counter, putting it between himself and Nottingham. "I can not allow him to continue to give you information about the Witchblade," Nottingham explained to Sara. "It is either that or I kill him."

"She does carry a gun," Gabriel pointed out, looking around nervously.

"Easily remedied," Nottingham replied. His hand shot out, and came up with Sara's gun held aloft like a prize.

"What the hell?" she snapped.

"It would be so very, very easy to shoot you now and get it over with," Nottingham commented to Gabriel, pacing around the counter slowly.

"And yet, you won't, because of my charm and good looks," the younger man said, backing away from the approaching assassin.

Nottingham shook his head. "You're not my type."

Gabriel didn't flinch. Sara did. She stepped right up to Nottingham, invading his personal space. "Get out."

He was stronger than her, with a lot more training in the art of killing people. He also had her gun. She locked gazes with him, resisting the urge to poke him in the chest. Finally, after what seemed to be forever but was in reality no more than thirty seconds, he stepped back from her. "As you wish." He bowed his head, the strands of hair that had escaped from his ponytail falling in his eyes. With a swish of his coat, he had left the shop, Sara's gun lying discarded on the floor.

"He can never leave like a normal person, can he?" she muttered as she bent to retrieve her weapon.

When she looked up, Gabriel was no longer behind the counter. An icy jolt of fear stabbed through her. "Gabriel?"

"Back here," he called. He was behind the shelves, at the very back of the store, and she wondered just how long she had been standing after Nottingham's departure for him to have had the time to get all the way back there with out her noticing. She wove through the many cases and shelves until she reached him. He was moving objects off of the shelves, checking behind them, and then returning them to their rightful place.

"What're you doing?"

He didn't answer, just continuing with his search. After a moment, he grinned in triumph, and held up a tiny black object between his thumb and forefinger. "I'd rather not have your stalker listening in on our conversations."

"You think he's got the place bugged?" she frowned.

Gabriel nodded, dropping the tiny metallic object into her hand. It was a very small microphone. "Think about it. He doesn't want me giving you info, but there doesn't seem to be much he can do about that right now, for whatever reason. So it would stand to reason that he would want to at least know what I'm telling you, what information you're getting."

She nodded, because when she thought about it that was the only reasonable conclusion to which one could come. A thought emerged from the depths of her subconscious, forcing it's way to the forefront of her mind. "Fuck."

He looked at her, pausing in his methodical search. "It's not a big deal, Pez. I'll just find the mics and remove them. I mean, didn't you expect something like this when he just left like that? No protests, no 'kill you later, Bowman', nothing. He just walked out like he didn't have a care in the world. I hate to say this, Sara, but you're not quite that intimidating."

She shook her head. "If he's planted bugs here in the very brief amount of time he actually spent in the building, just imagine what he has at my apartment?"

Gabriel grinned. "You watch too many horror movies."

Sara shook her head, suddenly feeling the need for a stiff drink. "For Christ' sake, Gabe, it's a perfect way for Kenny to know what his wielder's up to. He can keep an eye on me. Find out if there's anything I'm not telling him, any new developments with the Witchblade." She almost added something about Nottingham's practically non-existent sex drive getting fuel from any tapes of her, but forced the words back.

Gabriel finished with the shelves he had been searching, and moved on to the next display case. "You may wanna refrain from referring to yourself in the possessive when it comes to Irons. I'm sure Froid would have a field day with it, but I'm also sure it says something about your conflicted morals when it comes to the blade."

She cringed. "Thank you, Gabriel, for that ever so illuminating bit of psycho-analysis."

"Any time. Just call me Dr. Phil." He paused, and then shook his head ruefully. "On the other hand, don't. I'd like to keep at least a small amount of my credibility in the world of the normal humans."

She resisted the urge to shoot back with the 'too late' that was hovering just on the tip of her tongue. This was not Danny, who had known her long enough to understand when even the most heartless verbal jabs were just in humor. Nor was it Ian, to whom she had delivered the most cruel lines in her arsenal in hopes that he would leave her alone. This was Gabriel, and no matter how much she valued him (both as a friend and as a source of information), and no matter how strongly she felt that they had known each other in previous incarnations of the blade, she still had to be careful how far she pushed him. She had lost more than one friend, as well as a succession of lovers, with her unchecked sarcasm. It was a defense mechanism, honed during her years at the police academy, where women were viewed as weaker and incompetent by the males – equal opportunity her ass.

"I should probably check for spywhere on my computer, too," Gabriel commented absently, cradling a vase done in terracotta in his arms as he peered behind it's resting place.

"Do you do this kind of check every time he visits you?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I'm not in the habit of talking to myself. It is, however, why I came to your apartment this morning and didn't call you. You're apartment's clean, by the way. I left a dampener there this morning. You'll understand if I don't tell you where." He grinned. "The walls have ears."

"Why don't you just use one here? And thank you ever so much for telling me about that _after_ I had my horror movie freak out."

"Because the frequency it needs to kill the bugs interferes with my infrared transmissions."

She blinked rapidly. "Geek."

He sighed over-dramatically. "Sara, Sara, Sara. Infrared? For the printer and the laptop and—"

"I don't need to know. Really. I'm good." She held up her hands to ward off his torrent of technobabble.

Danny popped up beside her. She didn't even jump; she was getting used to his unexpected appearances. She arched an eyebrow at him.

"Pez, I need to talk to you. What I need to tell you—you're going to have questions, and I don't think you really want Gabriel questioning your sanity." He was making a valiant attempt to act as if the situation were casual. She could tell by the expression on his face that it was anything but.

"I'll be back," she told Gabriel. "I'm gonna make a coffee run while you clean up."

He bounded over to her, holding up a hand. "Hang on." He pulled something out from under the front counter, and pointed it at her.

"What the hell, Gabe?"

He moved it around her entire body like a metal detector at the airport. He reached the collar of her jacket, and the device beeped. He reached forward, and before she could make any move, his hand dipped inside the neck of her coat, coming out with a mic held in his grasp. She felt sick to her stomach.

"You never can be too careful with stalkers," he said in a macabre parody of cheer, and turned away. "I'll see you later, Pez. Please don't tell Ian I say "hi"."

XXX

TBC…


End file.
